Page 179 of King’s Ransom

Then I saw the old rusted concrete mixer in the corner of my concrete box.

At first, I saw its rusted leg-struts reaching down to some castor wheels.

They would work as chisels.

Then I saw something else.

An old lead-acid battery attached to the mixer, mounted between its little wheels.

It was like a car battery, only smaller.

Lead-acid batteries aren’t used much anymore—lithium-ion ones are much more environmentally friendly and are also rechargeable—but they are still used for machinery that requires industrial-level electric power, like cars, trucks and portable concrete mixers.

This battery, of course, was dead.

But I didn’t want it for electrical power.

I wanted it for its acid.

The sulfuric acid inside it.

Twenty minutes later, crouched in a corner of my concrete box, I poured some of the battery’s sulfuric acid against the wall.

Sulfuric acid is highly corrosive by itself.

I needed mine to be even more caustic.

So I ignited it with Oberov’s butane lighter.

The acid sizzled and bubbled as it ate into the concrete wall, giving off a foul acrid smoke.

My glasses acted like safety goggles, which was helpful.

I tried to breathe more shallowly—I didn’t want to knock myself out.

I knocked myself out.

I woke ten minutes later.

‘Damn it,’ I said to no-one.

I didn’t have time to waste.

I lifted my Patagonia jacket’s fleece collar up around my mouth and nose, and I tried again.

The acid ate into the smooth concrete and as it did, I started chipping away at it, using one of the four legs of the cement mixer as a chisel and one of the castor wheels as a hammer.

A small hole began to open in the concrete wall.

At first, it was just a tiny crater, but as I chipped away at it and splashed it with more hot sulfuric acid, it got wider.

And so I got to work, using the lighter as sparingly as I could, since (a) I wanted to conserve its fluid and (b) because using it meant using precious oxygen.

After two hours, at around 6:30 a.m., I broke through the wall—

—to be met by a darker body of concrete.

I’d come to the newly poured slab.